The idea of putting a couple of hours into a silly little piece of rubber only to accidentally hack a key piece out of it or turn a letter around backwards or some such just feels like it's not worth the risk.

I've been able to glue in a piece that I should not have cut out. I've done it multiple times. I don't know if others have noticed these patches, but I have. FYI, I use E-6000 to glue them back in because it remains a little flexible.

I have one stamp where I carved a letter backwards. It was one that I did a toner transfer too, so I shouldn't have messed it up. Since it was one of the Ns in BANANA, I decided to leave it.

That's probably about right for me too. It definitely depends on complexity.

My longest carve (to that point) is of a lighthouse, Minot's Ledge Light. It must have taken at least 10 hours over 5 days. It is an excellent carve, except that the top of the lighthouse is crooked. I used it for two LTC trackers, but they didn't have the same participants (except for me).

However, after that I carved another that took me longer. It was of the "Snow Business" episode of Simon's Cat. The frame was when the cat was poised to start the throw of the first snowball at the bird. I captured as much detail in the frame as I could, which was most of it. This one was maybe 15 hours. The carve is slightly larger than the 2½"×3½" card because I wanted it stamping edge-to-edge.

I most likely am in the slower category of carvers, but I have done detailed inchies in an hour and 5" x 5" stamps that took over 40+ hours. I probably am slower because I am careful, like Kirbert mentions, because I take on more and more difficult carves AND I don't do redos. Mistakes just become part of the work.

A great rule of thumb for speed of carving is...take as long as you want to feel like you are proud of your effort and work!

Challenging yourself for more and more detail can be great for some, and joy sucking for others. Carving fast may be easy for some and painful (literally - I tend to gouge my skin when going too fast) for others. Go at the pace you feel comfortable and find joy in the work!

Also note: Some of us are gouge carvers and some of us are hobby knife carvers. Hobby knife carving generally takes longer than gouge carving. In fact, we once had a post where someone suggested that more people should learn how to gouge carve because they'd end up carving more stamps and hence we'd have more boxes to hunt!

For me, it really depends on the stamp.. if it's a fairly simple stamp, I usually can finish in an hour or so.. any longer and I usually stop for a while.. (I've broken a couple of fingers in the past) because I'll start making multiple mistakes if I don't..

That’s a tricky question to answer. If I’m doing a simple carve such as a pictograph or one of my lighthouse stamps, I can whip through one of those in 10-20 minutes. If I’m doing an intricate one or anything with lettering, then everything is slowed down and I might be working for hours. Size of stamp has nothing to do with it, smaller may take longer do to detail.

I don’t really time myself, because I feel that if I do then it would depress me and maybe make it harder to find motivation to start. I just kind of wait for an open night when my health is good enough, enjoy the process, and binge-carve until I am done. It has given me many opportunites to see the sun rise! :P I am working on a series right now that has messed up my sleep schedule. Based on that, I think the stamps have been about 9hrs from when I start the transferring process to end. I tend to not take breaks and hyperfocus (the one good symptom of ADHD).

My transferring method is slow (pencil on tracing, rub, go over with fine marker, wash pencil off, mustard ink), but I feel it gives me better flexibility on customizations, etc. I use the pink stuff, so that is quicker from what I am reading here. I am mostly a knife carver, but use gouges for cetain thing and find many of my stamps now use both (but in that case it just tends to be use of the 1V Miniturized for shading). So really, there are ways to speed up my carving, but the #11 knife gives me the results I want for what I am going for. I keep trying to do gouges where I can, but I don’t like them for the insides of corners and such. Also, I prefer to feel like a surgeon. ;)

Sorry, I was being short with my wording. I use Staz-on in the color of mustard to seal my marker lines in and see what I am carving away. I press my stamp onto a paper towel several times to get the excess off.

Yeah, so say you are looking at the rubber from the thin side. Imagine the * is a black line or something. Another words, I am not carving that part away. I angle my knife like this on each side of it to give the black line better structure (or “supporting rubber”): /*\ Then I go in again at another angle to get the rubber out, so like this: \ /*\ / I also stab the loose rubber with the tip of the knife to lift it out of the stamp and use my pinky to flick it off into a small “lock-n-lock” type container I keep (to make less mess).